[RAMBLE AHEAD. RUN IN FEAR]
I didn't read your whole post, cause I'm lazy. The only point I could think of in response to the post was, "Well, I actually LIKED Enter the Matrix. I enjoy games based on how entertaining they are, not based on graphics or innovation or how much someone might pay me o review them, which is nothing anyway cause no one cares what I think." But the point I'm trying to make is, I'd rather play a game and enjoy it rather than worry about how buggy it is or whtaever. I loved Advent Rising. Everything coming out these days is a clone anyway, so you might as well enjoy your self with whatever is released, eventually people will release innovative games, and when they do it'll be great. Until then, though, I'm gonna just enjoy myself.
[END RAMBLE]
I think Perry's got a valid point hidden in there somewhere, which is that what game reviewers say is largely irrelevent most of the time. Critical success just doesn't lead to success at retail, as games like Ico, Beyond Good & Evil, and so forth have proven.
But the why is where I think Perry is wrong. The Matrix didn't sell because it was a great game that just wasn't hardcore enough for reviewers. It sold because it was a god damned Matrix game...and a shitty one at that. It sold because they got in before the license was worth nothing.
Driv3r is another perfect example of this. It didn't sell despite shitty reviews based on the fact that reviewers just didn't "get" it. Anything it sold was almost entirely based on the fact that the series DIDN'T suck before it came out.
It's funny that Dave and Shiny used to be the quirky, creative company you could always count on for something interesting, if not always amazing. Sounds like he just wants to churn out high-budget, licensed crap now.
Remember the original MDK? I loved that game...
I agree, to an extent, Sewart. Perry is right, after all. The point of bein gin business to make games is to make money doing it. Hell, even noting the irrelevance of reviewers is correct to an extent.
But Perry came out and said that he's in it to sell copies, not to advance the medium or produce an entertaining experience. Short-term, that's fine, whatever. Long-term, he's poisoning the gene pool for those of us who think that games could ever be considered art or advance past the me-too crap that passes for mass-market games these days. With no real indy-market to speak of, compared to that of movies, games rely on the mass market to test its innovations, and the more the mass market is encouraged to shun that sort of development, the less likely it is that anything truly exceptional will take hold.
Really, the "awesome" games nowadays, with the exception of things like Katamari Damacy, are evolutions. Doing something better than those who have already done that thing is the top goal of the business right now, and the emphasis is on graphics and flash, because that's what sells games.
Indeed, the number of "not very hardcore" gamers who liked Enter the Matrix far outweighed the number of critics and "hardcore" gamers who did, at least according to my informal polls. I suspect most of these non-hardcore gamers said upon playing it, "Whoa, it's like playing the Matrix!" without having really played enough other games to know to add "except with a horrific camera and physics that make the characters look like marionettes controlled by an epileptic puppeteer during an earthquake." With no real baseline except for, say, last year's Platinum Hits Edition Tony Hawk game, I suppose Enter the Matrix is indeed some sort of wonder. Ignorance is bliss, so they say.
For an experiment, let's change a couple words in Perry's quote like so: "The thing about the film business is that the reviewers who critique your movies are very hardcore film buffs with very strong opinions that don't necessarily reflect those of the mass market." Now pretend Jerry Bruckheimer's saying that about Roger Ebert instead of Dave Perry saying it about Johnny Game Critic. Every industry that can be construed occassionally as 'an art form' has multiple copies of this guy. Too many of them. I know Jerry Bruckheimer ain't in it for the elevation of human expression, yet movies still exist as art despite him. Often to spite him.
The role of the critic is to inform the opinion of the population, not reflect it: to say, "Don't settle for this, o populace, because you could have it so much better. I know, because I've seen it all." At least that's what they say about literary and film critics, so why not game ones, too?
So I wouldn't despair just yet: There are still vital and interesting games (Shadow of the Colossus or Okami or the next Legend of Zelda, an eternally awesome series despite its franchiseness). Dave Perry has taken on the mantle of the video-game-industry supervillain, and champions of good taste will arise to thwart his plans. That's just the way of it. At least, I'd like to think so.
"Dave Perry has taken on the mantle of the video-game-industry supervillain, and champions of good taste will arise to thwart his plans." Quote of the year!
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